Literary Theory and Criticism

By William Ray.
Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1984. NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1990.

By Maurice Natanson.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.
This work is particularly valuable for its clarification of concepts and terms that frequently emerge in the phenomenology of literature. Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. Drawing upon his philosophical predecessors Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Natanson paves his own way with stories and examples that themselves bear witness to how phenomenology occurs in literature.